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Difference-in-Differences with Interference

Ruonan Xu

arXiv 21 Jun 2023 · Econometrics

arXiv:2306.12003 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In many scenarios, such as the evaluation of place-based policies, potential outcomes are not only dependent upon the unit's own treatment but also its neighbors' treatment. Despite this, "difference-in-differences" (DID) type estimators typically ignore such interference among neighbors. I show in this paper that the canonical DID estimators generally fail to identify interesting causal effects in the presence of neighborhood interference. To incorporate interference structure into DID estimation, I propose doubly robust estimators for the direct average treatment effect on the treated as well as the average spillover effects under a modified parallel trends assumption. I later relax common restrictions in the literature, such as immediate neighborhood interference and correctly specified spillover functions. Moreover, robust inference is discussed based on the asymptotic distribution of the proposed estimators.

Citation extraction

44
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in-text mentions
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Leung (2022) `Causal inference under approximate neighborhood interference', Econometrica 90(1), 267–2930.8947571%
2Lu, Wang \ Zhu (2019) `Place-based policies, creation, and agglomeration economies: Evidence from china’s economic zone program', American Economic Jo…0.87482100%
3Abadie (2005) `Semiparametric difference-in-differences estimators', Review of Economic Studies 72(1), 1–190.87452100%
4Aronow \ Samii (2017) `Estimating average causal effects under general interference, with application to a social network experiment', Annals of Appli…0.8434375%
5Abadie, Imbens \ Zheng (2014) `Inference for misspecified models with fixed regressors', Journal of the American Statistical Association 109(508), 1601–16140.84333100%
6Sävje (2024) `Causal inference with misspecified exposure mappings: separating definitions and assumptions', Biometrika 111(1), 1–150.81142100%
7Manski (2013) `Identification of treatment response with social interactions', The Econometrics Journal 16(1), S1–S230.7946450%
8Basse \ Airoldi (2018) `Limitations of design-based causal inference and a/b testing under arbitrary and network interference', Sociological Methodolog…0.7373367%
9Sant’Anna \ Zhao (2020) `Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators', Journal of Econometrics 219(1), 101–1220.73732100%
10Kojevnikov, Marmer \ Song (2021) `Limit theorems for network dependent random variables', Journal of Econometrics 222(2), 882–9080.6938250%

Showing the top 10 of 44 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Big Wins, Small Net Gains: Direct and Spillover Effects of First Industry Entries in Puerto Rico0.950147
2Identification and Estimation of Staggered Difference-in-Differences with Network Spillovers0.817113
3Difference-in-Differences in the Presence of Unknown Interference0.64422
4On Evolution-Based Models for Experimentation Under Interference0.40511
5Environmental Policy and Firm Performance in Europe: A Difference-in-Differences Approach with Spillovers0.40511
6Efficient difference-in-differences estimation under partial interference with incremental propensity score policies0.40511